Jozef Gabcik

Jozef Gabcik (8 April 1912-18 June 1942) was a Slovak Staff Sergeant in the Czechoslovakian army during World War II. Gabcik was one of the leaders of Operation Anthropoid, the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, and he committed suicide before he could be captured.

Biography
Jozef Gabcik was born in Rajecfurdo, Hungary, Austria-Hungary (now Rajecke Teplice, Slovakia) on 8 April 1912, and he worked as a blacksmith before fleeing to the United Kingdom following Nazi Germany's occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1939. He was trained as a paratrooper in the Czechoslovakian army-in-exile, and he became a staff sergeant. In December 1941, Gabcik and Jan Kubis were airlifted into the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia to link up with the local resistance and carry out Operation Anthropoid, the assassination of SS leader Reinhard Heydrich. Gabcik became the lover of Lenka Fafkova, a woman who he had recruited into the resistance, and she assisted him with planning out the assassination. In May 1942, the attempt occurred; Gabcik's Sten gun stalled, but Kubis mortally wounded Heydrich with an anti-tank grenade. Gabcik succeeded in shooting his aide in the leg with a pistol while escaping, and he later escaped to the Cyril and Methodius Church with the other parachutists. However, he was enraged with the loss of Lenka, who was shot dead while trying to flee German captivity. Gabcik and the parachutists were besieged at the cathedral after Ata Moravec was tortured into betraying them, and they held off 750 German troops for seven hours. Gabcik and a few other resistance members hid in a crypt, where Czech fire brigades pumped water into the crypt in an attempt to flush them out. Rather than be captured, the parachutists took their own lives with their last rounds of ammunition.